I love this time of year, preparing for Christmas. I learned long ago that I enjoy it when I prepare way in advance so that I won’t feel rushed. In this video I show you my first 5 gift tags I will put on my gifts, one we will make together. By the end of five weeks we will have made 25, just in time for your Christmas giving. Each set of 5 will be a different design. They also make nice Christmas gifts that someone could use next Christmas.
Happy Creating,
Vicki
Although it’s been a challenging year to say the least, I tried to creatively and purposely keep in touch with my family and stay occupied with projects. Sticking close to home brought many smiles. In this video I talk about how I coped with Covid and ten things I thought of that made me smile.
I hope you too have had some happy times and stayed busy with a project or two to keep you motivated to enjoy your day.
Stay well and safe.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Vicki
I can’t believe the color and beauty of the trees in Michigan this year, or is it that I’m taking more walks outside this year due to Covid. I think they are staying on the trees longer, it’s been magnificent! I just had to take the time to paint some leaves. I could probably paint another picture of orange/yellow ones if I have the time, but these are what I painted this past week.
Hope you are enjoying the beautiful color in your area.
Happy Creating,
Vicki
Whew – I sure have more of an appreciation for Georgia O’Keeffe’s art after painting this rose. I really did enjoy painting this. Each petal was painted as if it was a delicate princess, thus the name, “Delicate Rose”.
Hope you are enjoying these Fall days. Keep your hopes up and keep busy enjoying what you can during these uncertain time. Thinking of you all, stay safe.
Happy Creating,
Vicki
Beautiful Lilies – These two Lilies were buds when I received a vase of flowers from my son and girlfriend for my birthday and it was so nice to see these pop open, they are such a beautiful color. I decided to paint a close up of them. I’ve been capturing photographs of the beautiful color of trees on our walk and although Lilies are not a Fall flower, these colored Lilies reminded me of Fall.
Happy Creating,
Vicki
These Mums have lasted the longest of the bunch I received September 13th. I love, love, love, (yes, three loves) painting with beautiful colors and I love the color of these flowers! I thought they’d be pretty painted as if they were in a terracotta pot. I painted the pot as if it had a little patina on it knowing these were complementary colors and thought that would look nice. I was excited to paint this as I think it turned out to be a nice Fall picture too.
Color, beautiful color. I’m so glad I made color charts. I painted for about a year not having my color charts and struggled to find the right color I was looking for in my paintings. Now all I do is find the color I want and see what two colors I need to combine to make that color. I The top and the left of the chart will tell me. I still am amazed at all the colors you can get by just having about 18 tubes of paint. I actually have another big color chart with different colors also, but couldn’t fit it in this picture. I used an artist sponge (shown here) to dab and add the look of patina to the pot.
Happy Creating with lots of beautiful color,
Vicki
This is the second painting I have finished from the beautiful flowers my son Jonathan and his girlfriend Molly gave me for my birthday, September 13th. I had divided the flowers into containers and having fun creating the paintings. In this painting I made the hydrangeas a little bluer, and painted some a lovely lime green as they were. I added a few golden rod and changed the Ball jar at the last minute from the one that said wide mouth to one that said Mason.
Hello Everyone, I had so much fun celebrating my “milestone” birthday September 13th, and all that week actually and received so many beautiful flowers. I have begun to paint my first vase of flowers. These red roses were actually among a bunch of several other beautiful flowers I received from my son and his girlfriend. I split them up into four vases and having fun painting and creating. Milestone birthday you ask? Well I only feel about 40 years old! Hope to be around for a long time!!
I am using a rubber cement eraser to take off the masking fluid. The masking fluid helped save my highlighted areas after I applied paint in my vase. The highlighted areas will give the vase that look of glass.
Happy Creating,
Vicki
Hello Everyone, One of my favorite things to make are gift bags. I love how it’s so easy to make bags out of recycled paper. I like to start in September as the time gets very busy around Christmas getting the decorations up, last minute preparations and yes this year we will still make the big dinner. Unfortunately this year due to the pandemic, all of us will not be able to gather together, but I will send a great dinner along with gifts to my children and families.
I hope you too stay hopeful and look forward to somehow celebrating this wonderful holiday. Thinking of you all and hope you are well.
Happy Creating,
Vicki
One day Tom and I were photographing this beautiful swallowtail in our garden. I don’t recall ever seeing such a beautiful butterfly flying around our Queen Anne’s Lace before. These beauties bring me so much joy. Golden Rod has just popped up in our garden for the first time, and I absolutely love seeing cat tails by ponds, lakes, or by the side of the road. I thought the combination of all of that with some rocks that I absolutely have so much fun painting would make a nice painting.
I also added geese flying because I think composition wise it added to the painting. I think this would look nice with a wooden or black metal frame. Hope you too are finding and enjoying so much of God’s beauty.
Happy Creating,
Vicki